First Look

The T-54 main battle tank was designed as a follow-on to the very effective T-34 series based upon combat experience against the best German armor. Armed with a 100mm main gun, the T-54 had better firepower than anything that the Germans had available (the Tiger II was still armed with the 88mm KwK). The T-54 also superior armor protection, but the weight of the thicker armor was offset by the reduction in height of the vehicle, so less armor was required, resulting in a tank that weighed a little more than half of the Tiger II. While development of the T-54 started during World War II, it would enter service in 1946, too late for cat hunting on the western front.

With the dawn of the atomic age, the Soviets found that the T-54 could survive close proximity to a nuclear detonation, but its crew wasn't so fortunate. The tank was updated with an automatic Nuclear, Biological, Chemical (NBC) protection system and the resulting design was designated T-55.

Invariably, for every combat system in the field, the best tool to get new crews oriented and safe in the shortest amount of time is to develop a trainer. In this case, a T-55 tank was disarmed and an instructor's driving position was installed to get new drivers on the range and learning how to deal with increasingly complex problems with an instructor ready to demonstrate and evaluate the student. In the course of removing the main gun, machine guns, ammo stowage, and other systems, the T-55C1's weight was significantly reduced which gave this variant greater speed and maneuverability.

Skif has released their next installment of the T-54 and T-55 series with this kit representing the training version of the T-55, essentially the T-55 with the armament removed and a second driver's station installed.

The kit is molded in green and olive green styrene and presented on seven parts trees plus one fret of photo-etched details, and four sections of vinyl track.

The kit has some nice detailing throughout though some of the details are a little soft. At least one of the sprue trees exhibits some flash forming on the parts indicating one or more of the molds are in need of some maintenance.

Construction is very straightforward with the hull going together first. The road wheels don't quite look right to me and your project may benefit from some aftermarket road wheels. While the vinyl track is molded well, experienced armor modelers know that it can be a challenge to model the droop of the Soviet track without using some thread techniques or simply replacing these with aftermarket track links.

The kit provides some photo-etched parts to enhance the details in a number of areas where they are visible. Kudos to Skif for this enhancement. These details include fender brackets, exhaust duct frame, engine deck frames, engine deck screens, light guards, tie-down rings, and various brackets. As a result of the addition of these photo-etched parts, the hull detailing is quite nice.

The turret is also a recipient of some photo-etch as well as some new-tool parts to block out the turret site and coaxial gun slots as well as a cover for the opening where the main gun would have been installed.

The kit also provides the KMT-6 anti-tank mine plow for the front of the vehicle to clear the areas where the tracks would apply weight on the ground. The KMT-6 was installed on all modern Soviet/Russian tanks from the T-55 to the T-80, so you can opt to use this assembly on a different tank project if you'd like.

Decals are provided for several examples of training vehicles.

Some might wonder why this kit versus the Tamiya T-55A. You can backdate the Tamiya kit, but with a retail price over twice the price of this Skif kit, plus the hard core armor modelers are going to add photo-etch to the Tamiya kit as well as the aftermarket track, the total project cost either out of the box or with a similar aftermarket trek will be around $25+ USD cheaper with the Skif kit.

My sincere thanks to HobbyTerra for this review sample!

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